Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

then he was in and among the surging crowd, and shielded from further disrupter fire.
    The crowd turned on Lewis, striking out with knives and clubs and even broken bottles, and Lewis howled with almost incandescent rage as he struck out with his sword, cutting down anyone who came at him with a weapon in hand. His every blow was a killing stroke, and there was no mercy or compassion in him as he forced a bloody path through the press of bodies to reach those who had opened fire on him. They knew what was really going on here, and Lewis was determined to get answers out of them.
    Before he killed them, for what they had done to his friends. Many of the militants turned and ran rather than face him, but some stood their ground, and smiled calm professional smiles as they hefted their weapons. Killing Paragons proved easier than they had anticipated. Killing a Deathstalker was nothing to them.
    Lewis hit them like God's own thunderbolt. He tore into the waiting assassins like an executioner, like death incarnate, pitiless and unforgiving, and they could not stand against him. He fired his disrupter at point-blank range, and the energy bolt seared through two assassins' bodies before it was soaked up by the milling crowd behind them. Lewis beat aside the sword of the first man to reach him, and opened up his belly with a sideways sweep of his blade. The assassin cried out in shock as much as pain, and fell to his knees, dropping his sword as he tried to stuff his guts back into the gaping wound. Lewis swept past him, thrusting and cutting with terrible speed, parrying the blades that came at him from all sides on his buzzing force shield.
    All too soon there was no one left prepared to face him, despite their wages and their orders, and the few assassins still alive turned to flee. Lewis cut them down from behind, until only one was left. He kicked that man's feet out from under him, and stamped on his hand till he let go of his sword. The assassin tried to crawl away. Lewis leaned over him, and the man turned suddenly and cut at Lewis's exposed side with a hidden dagger. Lewis slapped the knife out of his hand with almost contemptuous ease, turned off his force shield to save the power left in the energy crystal, grabbed a handful of the assassin's bloodred Church tunic, and hauled him to his feet. The man struggled and tried to pull away.
    Lewis pulled him close and head-butted him in the face. All the fight went out of the assassin as his nose broke, and blood flowed down his face. He would have collapsed if Lewis hadn't held him up. Lewis pushed his face into the shattered visage of his enemy.
    "You're a pro. What are you doing here? Who paid you to be here? Who organized all this?"
    A disrupter beam hit the assassin's head, fired from somewhere else in the crowd, and the head exploded in a red spray of vaporized brains and bone, spraying blood across Lewis's face. He didn't flinch or cry out, only dropped the headless body and looked quickly about for whomever had fired the shot. But whoever silenced the assassin was long gone, lost in the roiling crowd. Lewis glared about him, and everyone fell back, or tried to. Maddened as they were by bloodlust and the shouted slogans of the agents provocateurs, there wasn't a man or woman there crazy enough to take on the Deathstalker.
    Lewis's ugly face was uglier than ever now, and it had nothing to do with the dead man's blood and brains spattering his face.
    He strode through the crowd, calling out in a harsh and deadly voice for everyone to drop their weapons and surrender. Most did. Those who didn't, or didn't do it fast enough, he cut down without a moment's thought. He had gone beyond peacekeeping or even Paragon's work; this was revenge now, this was simple butchery, designed to intimidate and terrify those around him. Wherever the Deathstalker walked, the riot was over.
    But he was only one man, and he couldn't be everywhere. Hundreds, thousands of maddened militants still stamped back and forth, attacking anyone that represented authority.
    Emma Steel emerged from the fray to guard Lewis's back. Her armor was battered and splashed with blood, some of it her own, and what was left of her proud purple cloak hung in tatters from her shoulders. A near miss from a disrupter bolt had burned away all the hair on one side of her head, but her face was still cool and controlled, and her sword rose and fell with calm efficiency as she cut her way through the baying crowd to